What makes this so interesting is that music like thought always intends to get someplace specific. That place happens to be the end of the thought or the cadence. What makes this even more interesting is that just as we walk, to get someplace specific, at 116, most people also speak with the normal accents in their speech occurring at a rate of 116 beats per minute. But we only do this when we have something specific to say. People who by temperament, by personality, by persuasion, or by habit speak either faster or slower than that speed are perceived to be intolerably dull or slow witted, if they speak much slower than 116, or untrustworthy, if they speak much faster than 116. The affect of being slower is of slothfulness or of painful self consciousness. The affect of being faster is that of a shyster who is always trying to fast talk people into doing things they don’t want to do.
I thought this was fascinating, and it made me wonder whether it was applicable to pacing in other areas of creativity as well. Games? Blogging? Web site interactivity?
The whole block, excerpted from The Craft of Musical Communication – Part One:
St. Lambert, in his preface to his compositions, states that the normal tempo in music is that of a man walking. The observation that anyone can make from looking at people walking is that they all walk at different tempi. The only conclusion that one can make of this is that St. Lambert was an idiot. However, people used to make the observation that the earth was flat and concluded from that observation that, indeed, the earth was flat. If we take what St. Lambert said seriously and attempt to discover what he observed, then something very interesting happens. We discover that he was right. That is, if you observe all people walking, they indeed walk at all different tempi. But if you observe only those people walking “who are intending to get someplace specific,” they all walk at the same tempo. Large or small, young or old, the tempo is the same. The only condition is that they are healthy, able, strong, and normally formed. The tempo they stride at to get someplace intended is exactly 116 beats per minute. For every other purpose, people walk at all different speeds.What makes this so interesting is that music like thought always intends to get someplace specific. That place happens to be the end of the thought or the cadence. What makes this even more interesting is that just as we walk, to get someplace specific, at 116, most people also speak with the normal accents in their speech occurring at a rate of 116 beats per minute. But we only do this when we have something specific to say. People who by temperament, by personality, by persuasion, or by habit speak either faster or slower than that speed are perceived to be intolerably dull or slow witted, if they speak much slower than 116, or untrustworthy, if they speak much faster than 116. The affect of being slower is of slothfulness or of painful self consciousness. The affect of being faster is that of a shyster who is always trying to fast talk people into doing things they don’t want to do.
What is even more interesting is that at the same time the normal accents of our speech occur at 116 beats per minute, our moments of pause, our moments of emphasis, our phrases, the duration of silence between exchange of speakers in conversation occur at 72 beats per minute. What makes this interesting is that if you divide 116 by 1.618… (the number needed to calculate the ratio of the “Golden” proportion) you get 72 (exactly 71.69…)!
Anyone who finds these observations too incredible should prove it for themselves by taking a metronome and set it at 116 and put it in front of a television and discover the truth for themselves. Then they need to set the metronome at 72 to verify the speed of emphatic moments, pauses, phrases, etc. Then they need to set it slightly off these tempi to see if speeds such as 118 or 74 or 114 or 70 produce the same level of coincidence. Then they will know that what we have observed is real.
What is also extremely interesting is that there are a few other tempi which work. These tempi are multiples or divisions of 116 and 72 such as 58 (one half of 116), 144 (twice 72), 96 (4 times 72 divided by 3…a 3:4 ratio), 108 (3 times 72 divided by 2…a ratio of 3:2) 87 (116 times 3 divided by 4…a 3:4 ratio), etc.
What one can conclude from these observations is that the human brain is designed to process heard information at a precise rate of flow…
17 Responses to “An excerpt from The Craft of Musical Communication”
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This brought to mind the post by Perko a month ago, regarding the golden ratio in music from a different point-of-view:
http://projectperko.blogspot.com/2008/04/music.html
So that’s why Dark Side of the Moon syncs up to The Wizard of Oz so well. I’d sort of suspected it was something like this, but I never got past idle musing.
Hmm… the above example, as well as the discussion at the end of the quote on the other tempi which work, would seem to indicate that this works on much longer timeframes as well. I wonder what would happen if you tried to use this math to plan the average time to reach the next level in a MMORPG…
Pacing being important in gaming? Sure. Wasn’t there a study done that showed that platformers who had their characters jump and fall at roughly the same speed as Mario were precieved to have better controls? Falling too fast or too slow seems unnatural to gamers in the same way that people talking too fast or too slow seems unnatural. I’d be interested to see if you timed the mario jump rate if it’d fall within those ratios as well.
Definatley relevant to pacing of gameplay. Im not so sure we understand which aspects of the game map against which component of the music grammar.
I often come to compare game development with setting up an Opera. You have all those little components from the individual notes (which can play amazingly fast) all the way up to the experience the user leaves with when the opera is over. Which is a really slow something.
You also have a standard “feedback curve” which makes almost any feedback better if you use, which map against how a tone works. Attack, decay, sustain, release. Expose these variables to all feedback elements and tweak them to fit the design properly for taking control over the play experience.
As a musician, I would agree that there is a general pacing to music. However, what is lost in the idea is that there is also a flexibility to time. Speeding up and slowing down, stretching sounds in general can alter the communication of the music between artist and audience. It is the juxtaposition of these aspects that can create the story which, I believe, is more important than the individual words and sentences themselves.
As an example, a piece I created called “Tremble and Echo” involves two sections. The initial is a slow winding smooth course without tempo. The latter section involves a clearly delineated rhythm. Each section has a pacing, but more important is the involvement of both sections that serve to enhance the “story” as a whole.
The same concept occurs in games. During certain stretches a game may feel it has a quick pace and at others a slow one. Playing Half-Life, for example, one can sense portions where action has halted and the player can catch a breath. At other points, there is a frenetic pace while fighting off waves of enemies.
120 is the bpm for commercial music. Don’t get too hung up on this. Because of the way the notation is interpreted, one will see bpms of 180 for something that feels slow. The perception of beat as realized in speed is interpreted by the brain in accordance with other events in the musical structure. The ambient effects of the room or environment have to be accounted for as well as the overtone ranges. Pandit Ravi Shankar said that all that is to be known about music can be understood by understanding one note. Don’t generalize too broadly on western systems. The eastern rag/tal combinations are far more evocative and systematic with respect to human emotional response.
Musicians have been writing about music pacing in virtual worlds on and off lists for years because the same notion shows up in dance, acting, etc. The subject to study is the effect of pulsing repetitive signals on the autonomic systems, particularly breathing and then heart rate. Humans are not one system, but a set of coupled systems that create the illusion of consciousness.
Timing is everything. Listening is everything else. Western pop in the last two and half decades has been ampflifying the effect of the first because of the decline of the latter. Leonard Bernstein noted the pervasiveness of music in all aspects of commercial life (particularly Muzak) teaches people not to listen. My son is a jazz musician with respect for big band music and considers soul/funk to be ‘elevator music’ whereas my generation has exactly the opposite response. We are what we eat or who.
BTW: since some of you are musicians and 3D junkies, you may find these links to be intriguing:
http://www.fsu.edu/news/2008/04/20/geometry.music/
http://music.princeton.edu/~dmitri/ChordGeometries.html
@Kourosh, actually if you read the rest of the article, it goes on about how looseness in timing is very important. The whole thing is about getting music so that it feels more natural and speech like. The bits about timing were only part of it.
@len it also talks about THAT too. 😛
Raph only posted a tiny segment of the entire thing, probably because that bit has more relevance outside of music, but the entire article is extremely interesting.
Almost on topic(but not quite): It would be an interesting experiment to measure the rate at which people click through web-slideshow presentations. Seems like inexpensive scalable pacing, since we read at our own pace and click when we decide to absorb the next bit of information. The creator also uses text and images/icons to try to build pace in the slideshow.
Then it would be cool to write music that shifts depending on what slide is showing, like the subtle way game music can change when you enter a special area, or when an event takes place.
Cool. Given music timing in animation is a well-practiced craft, I hope so.!
I come from a music perspecive. To me, 3D animation is another representation of sequencing. Just as with the early days of hand-drawn loops, the copy and pasting effects over syncopated beats is a cool way to compose animation behaviors. D’oh.
You are exactly right about loose timing. To feel alive, it has to breathe… for one. Handwork is best, IMHO.
Aggregate sets with simple moving objects have immediate effects. It is one reason I like X3D timers: little sequencers. Scene graph timing systems have quirks though. A switching script gets complex fast although I found it easy to build up combined animation/sound loops for extended movements (several wavs or midis using the start/stop events in chains with cued cameras).
The subtlety of timing speech for character, well, a very good ear is required. Eventually you can create a library of generalized expressives in any idea library. Then animation of 3D looks a lot like Sibelius V. Stylization sets in. Generally, the handwork is best so the trick is getting ideas/idee/sequences that are atomic enough to build with.
Mostly… tedious composition if you attempt to do all the bits yourself. As an amateur, I won’t compose many of these, but I often wonder why more animation gurus aren’t teaming up with musical gurus to make guru3DMusic.
Complexity has one virtue: it’s hard to do so revealing if copied. 🙂
len
Human nature remains the same regardless of medium or context, and it’s changed very little throughout all of history and accross cultures. In fact there’s probably no reason to limit this to only humans, since other animals such as our pets and livestock can “understand” certain meanings by the tone and pace of our voice. There’s probably some level of fundamental same-ness amongst all complex mamals. That shouldn’t be surprising. Hence the age-old addage about “music calms the savage beast”.
The fact that this applies to game design isn’t surprising in the least.
So it comes down to:
1. Is the comparison real or metaphorical (eg, functional or evovcative)?
2. If functional, what kinds of functions prove to be useful to animators that provide timing cues to animations?
3. How should toolkits/editors/languages support these functions?
I gave the example of the X3D timers (interpolators) because I understand that model best as an animation tool and it is easy to create musical numbers with it. Do others here have different models?
The kensai Musashi Miyamoto talked about the foreground and background timing of combat and its importance to strategy. A crucial element is the relationship of different clocks at different bpm to each other. Slight variations here, for example, create that breathing effect.
So, if this is all true, it makes me wonder if people with ADHD have a conversational metronome that’s set to the wrong tempo. It might explain a lot of the problems exhibited, both for speaking and listening.
Metaphorical, mostly. However the functional side might map against the interaction circuit. The timing of verbs and feedback, the duration of state changes and the pace with which the user learn new stuff.
You know, I’ve always walked faster and talked faster than most people I’ve known… interesting that the two may be specifically linked. (Also very interesting that fast speech leads to suspicion; that explains a lot, personally)
And hey, I’m just geeky enough to go around saying I’m an overclocked model now. 😛
This is great stuff, and useful to me in both professional and entertaining ways!
Yes, I believe any media that you expect to “resonate” your audience is going to have to respect metre, flow, cadence, timing, and all that jazz. I’ve gone on about “esoterics” before and this is a great deal of why I tend to hold designers/developers to a bit of critical standard in what they are doing with the tools. Its absolutely neccessary to discover what physiological and emotional impacts different approaches will have on wide segments of your audience. Its also absolutely neccessary to avoid pointlessly negative material for the sake of profits.
Go ahead, call me a snob…I’ll thank you :9.
I make a big distinction between pointlessly negative and artistically purposeful. Much as we often talk about in comparing microphones, you cannot ask “which microphone is better”, you must ask “which microphone is better for this purpose”. That 30 year-old, 7-times repaired old ribbon mic with an odd ring in the upper harmonics might really beat out the SM57 in a few applications. Just find me a 300lb black woman to sing soul from and I can show you why (well, not “show” but…yeah :D). Likewise, you don’t look at any timing systems as “better”, you look at which one presents the mood and feel you’re going for. Using the “proper” bpm won’t help you hint to the player that this guy asking you to retrieve his stolen artifact is not trustworthy and is getting you to pull a robbery for him or that the fella giving you a statement about what he witnessed in an alley might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer and maybe isn’t giving you an accurate picture.
As just an added little bit, when I had first started doing song macros in SWG, I was somewhat careless and simply popped a line in with pauses between. Recently I went through quite a few and respaced them to have the song come out much more like it is heard. In some cases more strictly following the measures, in others thoughtfully broken into parts, or holding a word back for 2 seconds to give a more proper sense of resolve or cadence. The result, though not scientific, is that more people stop what they’re doing, turn their character to face the stage, and give an accolade afterwards far more than before (and with much less of a feeling like its just them being polite).
[…] meant he was curious.”You’re speaking faster than 116 beats per minute. This means you’re trying to grift me somehow.””Umm, I wasn’t…””It’s okay. Continue.” Jill opened her lips a little wider. On a wolf, this […]